I couldn’t quite decide where to drop this. “Gang Names” didn’t seem like an appropriate spot. I decided that the gangs themselves are one of the elements that sets Fight Klub apart, which is why it’s here.

Anyway, I was thinking that there should be some reason to choose your gang that goes beyond simple preference. Each gang could either have exclusive cards only they can use, OR. There could be special rules that only apply for members of a certain gang. For example, the Schrodinger’s Cats have a rule that gives them a random chance of staying alive when anyone else would be dead.

I’m not sure if this should be restricted to a particular format, or if it should be all-encompassing, like the Rule of a Month system they put in place for .hack//ENEMY.

In case this system applied to all formats, in order to prevent people from building decks that trigger solely off of their gang’s ability, perhaps the player who gets the Drop on turn 1 has the option of neutralizing all gang abilities for the duration of the game. Beyond that, if a particular gang’s ability still proves to be unfair, it’s a simple matter of changing the ability.

Bottom line: I want to see your gang affiliation matter in some way during gameplay. What’s everyone think of that?

Could be interesting, as long as it is kept in optional thing. Give the gangs abilities but have it be a house rule of sorts, i.e. abilities can’t be use unless both players agree to it at the begining of the game. Or have certain tournaments run with Gang powers.

On the other hand, I don’t want to have my favorite gang name ruined cause the ability is stupid. So I really could argue either way on that idea.

Good idea. I guess you have smartitude that is superior to mine.

Hm, that would be tough to do since it woud keep people from choosing certain gangs due to their weak abilities. However perhaps some form of bonuses could be given to gangs depending on how many regions they control. Thus, driving up tourney attendance…

I want my gang to have a double-turn ability.

Haha or howz about “insta-win” :p

Well, I thought this might make it too confusing since there’s a whopping 13 gangs, but maybe each gang’s ability could change periodically, like the Bizarro World card in VS. This would prevent people from choosing a gang for its ability, but if your tournament scene has a lot of different gangs it might get confusing to have to remember the new abilities everyone gets. Unless of course the tournament organizer has those abilities with him on a print-out.

Going back to the exclusive cards for a minute: each gang would get additional cards periodically. This would solve the same problem.

Going along with your idea of them changing periodically, we could all come up with 13 abilities that we feel are both good and balanced in the same way that we’ll decide the game names themselves. Then each year/quarter/month/tournament or whatever there could be a random drawing that assigns the abilities to the gangs. Clearly this must be done long enough in advance for tournament players to adjust their decks and strategies accordingly. This would be fun, and selecting the ability list could give us something else to do for now.

Gang-specific cards should be something like, in Black Beauties. Not part of “core” gameplay, but readily available to everyone.

Or maybe they could make these cheap 13 card packs, 1 card from each gang. Make it rare, and boom, you have a collection AND the card for your deck.

For abilities, I’d like to see a “gang war” type tourney, which is no different than any others except “gang stats” go into effect. These could be little (+1 green energy on your first turn), or bigger (for a “dark” gang, say all heroes get a -1 to all stats, villains get a +1)

There was actually a fairly lengthy topic about gang abilities back in the old gang forum, but it was kind of old even before the purge. Iirc, the end consensus was that finding 13 different abilities would not be easy and doing it without any overlap and making sure none of them were game-breaking would be very hard. Doing all that and ending up with abilities that were anything but worthless would be nearly impossible.

Perhaps if the abilities cycled through all the gangs it might balance out, but how would you work playing at an event that spanned several days and the abilities cycled sometime in the middle? That could change quite a bit by itself, and you would have to make sure the cycle wasn’t based on a normal year, or else you would have gangs getting the same abilities every year at the big annual events.

Another possibility would be to have “secret objectives” or something like that for each gang. In tournaments you get a few bonus points if you use a certain piece of gear a certain way, or score double damage with a certain fight card. This would only work in tournaments, and would be revealed at the end (“so that’s why he played it that way”).

@Blost. I think it might actually be kinda cool if there was an event that spanned a few days and it was planned that way to have the gang abilities change mid tourny (of course without players being able to change their decks, might be fun)

As for the idea itself, I am not playing gang abilities would work. Unless you are in a tourny and there is a registration, gang affiliation is hearsay.
I am , however, a huge fan of the 13 card pack, one for each gang, Because “once you join a gang you join for life”. Now you have 12 cards to trade to other gang members who want to use 3 in their deck. while you yourself try to get 3 of your gang card.
Or better yet if there were a specific hero or villain you would show your gang allegiance right off the start.
I dunno, sounds great though, I definately feel there should be some return to joining a gang, just not sure what it is.

I’m kind of a fan of the ‘fight klub city’ idea that’s been tossed around on the forums. You have a fictional city divided into sections that can be claimed by the gangs (depending on the outcomes of events, tourney results, gang participation, etc.) and if one gang can claim all the territories then they get bragging rights and something really special as a prize. Not sure what, but it would probably take quite a long time for one gang to claim all the sections without losing any of them, so it should defintely be something that would make all the gangs strive for it – which would, in turn, make it that much harder for any one gang to claim the entire city.

Hm, I never thought about gang affiliation being hearsay at tourneys, but I dare say you are right. I would guess for tourney results to count all players are going to use their handle not name which would link to their gang somehow, but for non-official that would be a hard thing to check unless someone has a linked computer or cell, but how do they know you are actually using your handle? This is a problem I shall ponder awhile…

For non-official tournaments there would be no need for this mechanic. Players are free to do whatever they want in private games.

Also keep in mind that, order to join a gang, someone within the gang has to vouch for you. If noone from that gang likes you, you can’t join the gang. Just like in real life…

Well you cant really put gang specific cards into a set. There are 30 uncommons. Lets say 8 characters with 2 uncommons each is 16 then you add 13 uncommon gang cards. If you made them common, 26 out of the 80 cards would be gang specific. I’m not too sure about 1/3 of everyones commons being gang cards.

The Black Beauty thing may work, just make them non-random and no more than 1 card per gang so people dont have to spend more than the $100 benchmark for tgcs that they are so proud of.

Gangs shouldnt effect how you play, but why you play. They arent a part of the game, but a part of the community. So people should think about how differently the gangs can interact with one another moreso than how they can effect gameplay. Thats not to say gangs shouldnt be able to effect the game. (i.e. What cards get in, what cards dont kinda thing.)

@Blost

I love that idea, who came up with it?
Log on to the decipher site and check on how your gang is progressing towards conquering the FK city. based on regional and overal team stats.. It’s great.

Side Tangeant
Wow. something just occured to me., are we sure we are going to have regionals and such, isnt the idea of this game to just be able to have little fights while your in between games at other tournies?
I mean have D ever stated the intent of organized tournaments? They probably have, I just can’t remember it.

back to the topic
So the virtual city is devided into regions or maybe even streets, and you can fight for your gang in those streets. Man I can just picture the hard cores travelling 7 hours to other parts of the world to enter a tournament that decides “maple street”. Great Idea.

EDIT:
@Mike
I think we were toying with the idea of putting the gang cards in a black beauty and not taking up space in the set. Now i just had a great idea of being able to order your gangs card from decipher.
They could ship just like prize support or something

Hmm…rather than gang abilities being based entirely on the gang, they could be decided by what regions you control in the FK virtual city. Want to get a +1 physical for your gang? Take over the gym. Want a +1 mental? Take over the library. Want to reduce the cost of your gear by one energy token? Find and take over the hidden weapons cache.

If we can get them to organize a “gang-territory” continual war thing, that would be awesome.

If they don’t, I personally volunteer to head up such a game event, adding what Altarvo has mentioned to my attempts at territory-war rule layouts. (note: that was the objective of “Rule Variant Volume 1 Issue 4”, but I’m not happy with it yet, so I haven’t posted it)

At the very least, we could create a fan league. We could run it online, and set up requirements for reporting it online, and keep it going constantly. So you could have pockets of 3-4 gang members running all directions doing whatever the crap they want. OR you could have an organized gang, marching down the streets winning battles left and right.

Well. Looks like I’ve got something to occupy my free time over the weekend. :)

yeah, I love the rewards based on territory controlled idea. Plus, it adds incentive for player’s to actually get off their rears and make it to tourneys…

I love the idea of “FK City”, but to be honest I’d rather it was just for bragging rights than for any kind of concrete benefit. I’m not keen on the gangs being different in any kind of material way, I’d rather it was just an outlook/attitude kind of thing.

Yeah, I guess the big problem with rewards would be if one gang took a ton of territories, then they would have a huge advantage in every tourney from then on…

That’s always the problem with something like this.

What if one gang’s bigger than the others from the outset? I mean there’s nothing stopping Schroedinger’s Cats (for example) having more members at startup that all the other gangs put together. They’d wind up winning more games and getting more territory just by weight of numbers rather than any kind of skill. Now that’s one thing when it’s just names on a map, but if they’re getting in-game bonuses off it it becomes a lot harder for the “little guys” to catch up.

Yes, plus then everyone would want to join the larger more powerful gang and reap the benefits. Thus dropping little gangs further behind… :(

Well, I would think the bonuses only count in special “Territory Tourneys”. Territory only counts when you are playing games directly related to that territory (ie attacks or defends).

And it would be very easy to say that you can only benefit from one territory at a time. Gaining +1 physical from the gym means you spent enough time there that you have NOT spent enough time to gain +1 from the library too, despite the fact that your gang owns both. Then, large gangs with lots of territory simply have more OPTIONS, not more total bonuses.

There’s all sorts of things we can do to help little gangs, too. Maybe the big gang is spreading their numbers too thin. This weakens them, giving him a penalty or the little guy a boost in that particular territory match.

Of course, the city could grow. Smaller teams claim new areas outside the basic area, maybe to coincide with new sets. New mechanics = new options for boosts for new territories.